Think you’ve a strong beer?
The BrewDog team have pulled off our most audacious and ambitious project to date, and smashed a world record in the process. We have today, Thursday 26 November 2009, set a new world record after creating the strongest beer in the world. Weighing in at an ABV of 32%, BrewDog’s ‘Tactical Nuclear Penguin’ beats the previous record of 31% held by German beer brand Schorschbraer.
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The Antarctic name inducing schizophrenia of this uber-imperial stout originates from the amount of time it spent exposed to extreme cold. This beer began life as a 10% imperial stout 18 months ago. The beer was aged for 8 months in an Isle of Arran whisky cask and 8 months in an Islay cask making it our first double cask aged beer. After an intense 16 month, the final stages took a ground breaking approach by storing the beer at -20 degrees for three weeks to get it to 32%.
For the big chill the beer was put into containers and transported to the cold store of a local ice cream factory where it endured 21 days at penguin temperatures. Alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water. As the beer got colder BrewDog Chief Engineer, Steven Sutherland decanted the beer periodically, only ice was left in the container, creating more intensity of flavours and a stronger concentration of alcohol for the next phase of freezing. The process was repeated until it reached 32%.
There are 500 bottles available. 250 will be sold for approximately $70 each, and the other 250 will be sold for $500 and include stock in the brewing company.
Seeing as how you have to special order it, and that it is only safe to drink in shots, I think that getting a group together and ordering up a bottle would be prudent?
Found via Samidata.Net
Yeah, I thought about getting some for a friend, but at 30 quid a bottle and 40 quid for shipping, it came out to 125 us dollars. I would much rather pay a little more and get a 750 ml of Johnny Walker Blue than 330 ml of a beer that will be gone oh too soon.
Yeah, we used to do that with cheap orange wine down here in Florida, freeze it in ice-cube trays and pour off what didn’t freeze. Of course that was back when that was all we could afford to buy (as poor college students); that and Everclear.
Freeze-concentrating is functionally the same as distilling, making this product NOT a beer, but a brandy.
The true beers are never over 12-13% ABV, because of physics: any more alcohol than that kills the biotics which produce more alcohol. Consequently, the only way a 32% “beer” could be made is by separating the flavor essences, since no new ones were generated after 12-13%.
BTW, we would have called that concentrated orange wine an “orange jack”, back when I got good at making apple jack out of hard cider. I never measured the specific gravity of my apple jack, but I guessed it to be between 25-30% ABV.
That’s a spendy “ale jack”, but I like the idea, and wonder what some homebrew taken to the freezer would taste like.
Winter project coming on.